Know The Score By Now

Back in the summer of 1992 I developed a deep and lasting love affair with 1970s soul and disco, prompted if memory recalls by an HMV sale which meant I picked up two volumes of a Telstar-released disco compilation (the identity of which will have to wait until I’m at home) which were crammed with classics from the era.

Returning to university that autumn I immediately instigated a disco show on the campus radio station. Every Monday night at 8pm I pitched up on air with the choicest cuts of the era along with some hidden gems too and basically lost myself in Philly strings for two hours. If memory serves the show’s theme was a hideously bad version of Pink Floyd’s Money as performed by an Australian outfit called Rosebud on an album called Discoballs, one which every week I regretted due to the fact that the album’s cover featured a very of its time depiction of a naked lady and the show preceding mine was the weekly women’s issues show co-hosted by the union Women’s Officer.

I’d end the show each week with a selection of all-time classics. The tracks that were justifiably famous and had remained so for the decade and a half (or more) since. There was one song that I would come back to again and again and ended up describing it on air as “the reason this show exists”. To this day I view it as one of the most perfect records ever made and one I can listen to ten times in a row and still discover something new about it each time.

Who would have guessed then that the only thing capable of making it even better was a YouTube video of the full length 12-inch disco mix being played out on an SL1200 record deck? Even if the uploader has disabled embedding. Click through anyway, it is still well worth it.